A first look at US Fighter Projects #3.
Jul 102018
Jul 102018
Jul 092018
China reveals details for super-heavy-lift Long March 9 and reusable Long March 8 rockets
Long March 8: meant to emulate the Falcon 9 with a vertically-recovered core, but also use vertically-recovered solid rocket boosters (likely via parachute, though art seems to indicate that they too will have landing legs).
Long March 9: intended to be Saturn V class for manned missions to the Moon and beyond.
No indication that the Long March 9 is aiming for reusability, so it seems likely that the Chinese are emulating not the BFR but the SLS. It is too much to hope that China will emulate the spectacular economics of the SLS as well.
Jul 092018
There was a time when rocket engineers and launch vehicle/spacecraft designers felts reasonably comfortable proposing the use of propellants that today would be considered *insane.* One of these was fluorine, an oxidizer so powerful that it will oxidize *oxygen.* Liquified it is denser than LOX and provides a higher specific impulse than LOX when burned with the same fuels. On paper, liquid fluorine is spectacular. In reality, fluorine is toxic and just about all of the combustion compounds are toxic (burn it with hydrogen and you get hydrofluoric acid, which will eat your bones). Fluorine has the added bonus that it will merrily combust with a whole lot of structural materials, so you have to be careful in your design and preparation for tanks, pumps, lines, etc.
Consequently, it was important to know your stuff. To that end, Douglas Missile & Space Systems Division produced a Fluorine Systems Handbook.
This Handbook contains criteria for the design of airborne fluorine feed
systems and associated components. Two types of information are presented:
1) philosophical information defining general methods, and 2) detailed specifications
and procedures. Although the major emphasis has been upon
criteria for components exposed to elemental fluorine, the information is
general applicable to systems utilizing other cryogenic oxidizers which contain
fluorine as a constituent.
So if you are planning on fueling your rocketship with liquid fluorine… here ya go. You’re welcome.
Fluorine Systems Handbook
Jul 022018
This will hook you right up:
Lots of photos.
Jun 302018
In just under the wire for June, 2018 are the rewards for APR Patreon patrons. Included this month:
- A sizable January, 1945 technical description of the YP-80 “Shooting Star” by Lockheed. 300 or so pages, filled with illustrations of the aircraft and components.
- “On The Utility of the Moon in Space Transportation: the Lunatron Concept.” A 1963 NASA concept for using an electromagnetic accelerator to hurl payloads from the lunar surface onto high energy trajectories, up to solar system escape.
- A scan of a large-format Sikorsky lithograph of an ABC (advancing blade concept) VTOL airliner (basically a 727 fuselage turned into a high-speed helicopter).
- An all-new CAD diagram of the Soviet Chelomei LKS spaceplane with an inboard profile showing the military (nuclear bombardment) payload. The first in a series on the LKS.
If you are interested in helping to preserve (and get copies of) this sort of thing, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
Jun 302018
In 1959 Lockheed printed up a self-promotion booklet to sell to new and prospective employees the advantages of their Georgia facility. It includes a lot of photos showing the joys of working in the deep south in the era before universal adoption of air conditioning while wearing three piece suits and ties, as well as photos and art of the various facilities, aircraft and projects then at work at Lockheed-Georgia.
I have posted the full-rez scan of the booklet, available to $10+ APR Patreon patrons. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
Jun 262018
Faster Than Concorde: Boeing Hypersonic Jet Concept Would Cross Atlantic In 2 Hours
Boeing revealed artwork of a hypersonic transport at an AIAA conference in Atlanta. Capable of Mach 5, Boeing suggests that they could build this aircraft soon… in as little as 20 or 30 years.
Not a whole lot of detail on this one as yet. And given that the claim is “thirty years in the future,” chances are that this design is little more than artwork. The fuselage is pretty generic (although those are some big windows for a Mach 5 aircraft), but the wings and stabilizers (and apparent engine nacelles) are taken from previous Boeing designs stretching back to the 70’s.
Jun 242018
Convair B-58A serial number 55-665 was unique due to the extended nose radome. This was in support of the YF-12 program: the AN/ASG-18 radar from the YF-12 was grafted onto the nose of the B58, and a special pod was constructed that would carry a single AIM-47 missile on a deployable “trapeze” launch rail like the YF-12.
SN 55-665 is one of the few surviving examples of the B-58. Sadly… “surviving” is a relative term. It’s sitting in the Mojave desert at Edwards Air Force Base, out in the approximate middle of nowhere; it has been stripped of pretty much everything including not only engines but also nacelles. It was placed there not as a gunnery target, but a photo target for satellite reconnaissance systems. (satellite imagery can be seen HERE) The desert is a benign environment for long term storage of metallic aircraft, but it it still non-optimum. It can clearly be found and climbed upon, which seems not only disrespectful but also unwise.
Seems to me that this aircraft should be taken to a museum and restored. However, restoring it to the appearance of a flyable aircraft would seem a virtual economic impossibility given its depleted state. Still… it does seem that it could be cleaned up, some missing bits restored, and put on display as a “cutaway” showing the inner workings of the aircraft.
Jun 202018
First draft of diagrams for the next issue of US Launcher Projects. This will include concepts such as an eight-F-1 Nova, a 1962 Lockheed fully reusable spaceplane launcher, a Boeing HTOHL SSTO, a Convair VTOHL Delta Clipper competitor, a giant SPS launcher, a balloon-recovered Saturn I, an early Space Shuttle concept and an expendable SSTO.
